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Sunday, 30 December 2012

Nothing to post from my pen from over the holidays but I have come across a site, Poem Hunter.com which publishes collections of poems by some very well known poets, not sure of how they work exactly but it is free to download thousands of poems in collections by author/poet.

It is an educational site and has the following nnote about copyright:PoemHunter.Com is a non-profit site. Poems are published on this site
purely for educational reasons, for the purpose of information and with
good intentions. If the legal representatives ask us to remove a poem
from the site, this will be done immediately. We guarantee to fulfill
such demands within 48 hours. (PoemHunter.Com reserves the right to
investigate whether the person submitting that demand is authorized to
do so or not.)

I know that I read lots of poetry both classical and new, I think this will be a wonderful resource to make a note of. They do seem to make it difficult to copy poems from the e-books (I am not very tech savvy) so I cannot post a few snippets/samples of the poetry as I had intended. I can see how by printing and re-scanning/etc it would be possible but the effort would probably not be worthwhile. You will have to visit the site yourself and download your own e-books.

I shall certainly enjoy reading some of the poems and adding to my own poor skill set by the examples set by the poets whose work is being made available.

The works available as downloads run from Shakespeare to Wordsworth to Frost to Spike Milligan; you can see that there is a very exhaustive data base.

Monday, 24 December 2012

It has been a while, I was hoping to have been able to justify a new post with a new poem but it is not to be. As before in my last few posts therefore I am simply going to leave you with a couple of other snippets or fragments which I have been working on. I am also intending to include one or two images so that when I come back to these I will perhaps be able to carry on where I left off.

Summer is over, now Autumn rules

and the wind blows cold

time to wrap-up, dig out warmer clothes.

Blue skies darken, grey clouds scudding by

bringing rain and bringing floods.

Like a spoilt child the wind will rage

showing ever changing moods.

Each day I think of you

I think of how to please you

I think I do not know you

Because I always fail

You turn my thoughts away

You turn the tide each day

I can never find an appropriate way

To turn my thoughts to action

There's always some complaint

That seems a cause to rant

And rave, that boils my blood

And buries sweeter thoughts of love

I am thinking that the fragments are becoming poorer in content and as poetry. I am fast losing confidence in my ability, was it just a flash in the pan; those couple of dozen poems which I created before the turn of the summer. I just wish that I could find the creative spark which I thought I had triggered. I am not claiming that those poems were classics but I was proud of them and believed that I could get better. Unfortunately in trying harder to improve I seem to have lost my way. And I am getting to be a bore on the subject.

I have been reading books, magazines and blogs and can't help wondering if I am trying too hard. Am I being put off by what I am reading? This is why I would like to give a link to a blog which includes a short poem written to a prompt. Maybe this has something to teach me? I know lots of sources of prompts for writing and for poetry, maybe I should try this and simply open my mind and let go, not worrying about the length of the poem but just creating a fragment for its own sake. If I can start to believe in myself again maybe the longer and "better" poems will start to flow again.

The blog is by Peggy Goetz and is calledON A DAY LIKE TODAY.Two poems I liked particularly from the latest posts were December Afternoon and Words Matter. I shall be reading a few more poems by Peggy and hoping for some inspiration. Wish me luck.

By the way, one of the best sites for poetry prompts must be the site Poets United, give it a try.